When the Problem Becomes the Pattern

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[While this article is directed at married couples, it offers profound insight for many leadership and relationship situations.]

Most married couples think they know what they are fighting about. Money. Sex. Children. The house. Work. His mother. Her mother. The fact that somebody apparently believes an empty toilet-paper roll is capable of replacing itself.

And sometimes the problem really is the problem. A bill was not paid. A promise was broken. Somebody spent money that should not have been spent. Someone spoke harshly. Somebody failed to follow through.

But researchers who have spent decades studying distressed couples have discovered something enormously important: The problem is not always the problem. Sometimes the pattern around the problem becomes the real problem.

Lisa Benson, Meghan McGinn, and Andrew Christensen examined several major evidence-based approaches to couple therapy and asked an interesting question. Although these approaches differ in important ways, what do the effective ones tend to have in common? They identified five recurring principles: helping couples see their problem differently, reducing destructive emotion-driven behavior, bringing hidden emotions into the conversation, improving constructive communication, and strengthening what is already good in the relationship.¹

That may sound like something written primarily for therapists. It isn’t. There is a remarkably practical marriage lesson hiding inside it.

Two People Can Have One Problem

One of the first things distressed couples tend to do is locate the problem inside the other person. He doesn’t communicate. She is controlling. He doesn’t care. She complains about everything. He never listens. She won’t let anything go.

There may be truth in some of those statements. Sometimes one spouse really is behaving badly, and nothing in couple research requires us to pretend that responsibility is always fifty-fifty.

But Benson and colleagues point out that distressed couples characteristically develop one-sided, blaming explanations for their problems. Effective therapy tries to move them toward what researchers call a dyadic understanding—looking at what is happening between two people rather than locating the entire problem inside one of them.¹

Scripture has been confronting our tendency to begin with the other person’s problem for a very long time. Jesus’ picture of the speck and the log in Matthew 7:3–5 is almost comical because the human tendency it describes is so recognizable. We can become extraordinarily perceptive about what is wrong with the person standing across from us while remaining strangely unaware of what we are contributing. Jesus does not say the speck isn’t there. He tells us where to begin looking.

Now we have a different question. Instead of asking only, “What’s wrong with my husband?” we begin asking, “What happens between us when this problem appears—and what am I contributing to it?” That is a radically different question.

Christensen and colleagues developed this idea extensively in Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy, or IBCT, an approach that combines efforts to change destructive behavior with learning how to understand and respond differently to some of the differences that naturally exist between two people. One of its techniques is called unified detachment. The name sounds more complicated than the idea. Husband and wife learn to step back from the fight long enough to examine the pattern almost as though the pattern were sitting on the kitchen table in front of them.²

The problem begins to change from YOU to THIS THING WE KEEP DOING.

That doesn’t eliminate individual responsibility. It helps us see responsibility more accurately.

Meet Demand and Withdraw

One of the most heavily studied destructive patterns in marriage has the wonderfully technical name demand-withdraw. You have probably met it.

One spouse wants something discussed or changed and begins pushing. The other spouse tries to escape, shut down, change the subject, postpone the discussion, or otherwise get away from it. The first spouse senses the withdrawal and pushes harder. The second spouse experiences more pressure and withdraws further.

The first spouse now thinks, “SEE! You won’t deal with anything!” The second spouse thinks, “SEE! This is why I don’t want to talk to you!”

Congratulations. You have now created a machine that manufactures its own evidence.

Researchers have studied demand-withdraw for decades. In observational research—research in which investigators actually watch and code how couples interact rather than relying only on what people later say happened—“demanding” includes behaviors such as blame, criticism, accusation, nagging, and pressure for change. Withdrawal includes silence, disengagement, avoidance, changing the subject, or attempting to terminate the conversation.³

And this isn’t confined to couples sitting in a laboratory with cameras pointed at them. Lauren McGinn and colleagues studied more than 1,000 actual marital conflicts occurring at home. Demand-withdraw patterns were associated with more negative emotion, more destructive tactics, and poorer conflict resolution.⁴

Kathleen Eldridge and colleagues compared severely distressed couples seeking therapy, moderately distressed couples seeking therapy, and couples who were not experiencing significant marital distress. Greater demand-withdraw behavior went along with greater relationship distress.⁵

Other longitudinal research (studies that followed couples over time) found that these patterns were associated with declining marital satisfaction, although the research is less clear about whether they actually predict divorce.⁶

So demand-withdraw isn’t just an irritating communication habit. It can become a problem-maintaining process—a pattern in which the way husband and wife respond to the problem actually helps keep the problem going.

James gives us an extraordinarily compact alternative: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger” (James 1:19). Notice how much relational wisdom is packed into that sequence. Listen first. Slow the response. Slow the anger. James is not describing a modern therapeutic model, but he is addressing the human tendencies that make destructive patterns possible in the first place.

That idea is going to matter.

But Which One Is the Bad Guy?

Ah. There we go again. We learned about demand-withdraw and immediately wanted to know which person to prosecute.

That is precisely the instinct we are trying to overcome.

Early research frequently found wives demanding and husbands withdrawing more often than the reverse. But later research discovered something very important: the subject of the disagreement matters.

Researchers sometimes describe this as topic-dependent role reversal. Put that into everyday marriage and it means the person who most wants change on a particular subject is more likely to become the one pushing for the conversation. Change the subject, and husband and wife may change chairs.⁷

Suppose she wants him to spend less time at work. She presses the issue; he retreats. But suppose he wants a significant change in their sexual relationship. Suddenly he may become the pursuer and she may withdraw.

The personalities didn’t change during dinner. The desired change did.

Research has also found demand-withdraw patterns cross-culturally—meaning researchers have found versions of the pattern among couples from different cultures—and in both heterosexual and same-sex relationships. That makes it much harder to reduce this to “women do this and men do that.”⁸

Human beings are considerably more interesting than that. And occasionally more exhausting.

Why Pushing Harder Often Doesn’t Work

Here is the terrible irony. The demanding spouse usually demands because he or she wants engagement: Talk to me. Deal with this. Change something. The withdrawing spouse often withdraws because he or she wants the conflict to decrease: Stop. Leave me alone. I can’t do this right now.

So both people may be doing something that makes sense from inside their own experience. But together their strategies become combustible.

The more one pushes, the more the other retreats. The more the other retreats, the more desperately the first pushes. Both people then interpret the spouse’s reaction as proof that their own behavior was necessary.

That is how patterns become entrenched.

Family-systems researchers study relationships partly by looking at people as an interconnected system: what one person does affects the other, whose response then affects the first person again. In that kind of system, an attempted solution can sometimes help produce more of the behavior it was intended to stop.⁹

Read that again. My attempted solution may be helping perpetuate the problem I am trying to solve.

If you are the pursuer, pushing harder may be helping produce more withdrawal. If you are the withdrawer, disappearing may be helping produce more pursuit.

That does not mean your spouse’s behavior is your fault. It means you may be participating in a pattern that neither of you knows how to stop.

And that is actually hopeful news. Because if you can participate in maintaining a pattern, you can also begin participating in changing it.

Stop Calling the Problem “You”

This brings us back to Christensen’s unified detachment.

Instead of saying, “You’re controlling,” try describing what actually happens: “When you become worried that I’m not taking something seriously, you press harder for an answer. I begin feeling overwhelmed and pull away. When I pull away, you become more convinced that I don’t care, so you push harder.”

Now we have something we can examine.

Notice that we haven’t declared either behavior acceptable. We have described what actually happens. That distinction matters. A couple cannot change a pattern they cannot see, and they cannot see it very clearly while each person is standing inside it yelling about the other person’s part.

Unified detachment puts the pattern where both spouses can look at it. What triggered us? What happened next? What did I do? What did you do in response? What escalated us? When did one of us shut down? Did either of us try to repair the conversation? What happened then?²

It changes the geometry of the fight. Instead of HUSBAND → WIFE, we want HUSBAND + WIFE → PATTERN.

That change of orientation has a deeply biblical counterpart. Paul tells believers, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty pride, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3–4). Imagine bringing that posture into the middle of a marital disagreement. I still care about the issue. I still tell the truth. But I am no longer trying to win while treating my spouse as the obstacle standing between me and victory.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Anger May Be the Loudest Emotion Without Being the Deepest One

Another principle Benson and colleagues found across effective couple therapies is helping people express important emotions they normally avoid.¹ IBCT sometimes distinguishes between the harder emotions we tend to show and the more vulnerable emotions underneath them.

Anger is easy to throw: “You don’t care about me!” What may be underneath it is much harder to say: “When that happened, I felt unimportant to you.”

Those sentences do not land the same way. One invites defense. The other creates at least the possibility of understanding.

IBCT calls this empathic joining—learning to communicate the hurt, disappointment, fear, rejection, loneliness, or vulnerability underneath the conflict in a way that helps your spouse understand your experience rather than feel attacked by it.¹⁰

Paul’s instruction to be “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) holds together two things we are remarkably talented at separating. Truth matters. So does love. A spouse who speaks lovingly while avoiding the truth has not communicated faithfully. But neither has the spouse who uses truth as a weapon and then defends the wound by saying, “Well, it was true.”

Ephesians 4:29 pushes the idea even further: our words should be useful for building others up according to their needs. That does not require soft-pedaling reality. It requires asking whether the way I am communicating truth is helping my spouse hear the truth or making defense almost inevitable.

That does not mean every angry statement hides some innocent emotion that excuses bad behavior. And it does not make your spouse responsible for eliminating every uncomfortable feeling you experience. It means couples often communicate the armor instead of what the armor is protecting.

And armor tends to produce more armor.

Emotion Is Real. It Is Not Always a Good Driver.

Another common principle of effective couple therapy is decreasing destructive behavior that is driven by emotion.¹ Feeling angry and behaving angrily are not identical things. Feeling afraid and withdrawing are not identical things. Feeling hurt and attacking are not identical things.

Psychologists often use the term emotional regulation for the ability to experience an emotion without automatically allowing that emotion to determine what you do next.

That’s an enormously useful ability in marriage.

If I feel criticized, I may want to defend myself immediately. If I feel ignored, I may want to increase the volume until ignoring me becomes physically impossible. If I feel controlled, I may want to walk out. If I feel abandoned, I may pursue harder.

The emotion may be completely genuine. The response may still make matters worse.

Maturity requires learning to create enough space between what I feel and what I do that I can choose a response consistent with what I actually value.

Scripture is remarkably realistic about this. Paul says, “Be angry, yet do not sin” and immediately warns, “Do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:26–27). Anger itself and what we do with anger are not the same thing. An emotion can be real—even justified—and still become an occasion for destructive behavior if we surrender ourselves to it.

For Christians, then, self-control is not only a communication skill. It is fruit produced by the Spirit of God (Galatians 5:22–23). We are not commanded never to experience strong emotion. We are commanded not to surrender ourselves to it.

Communication Skills Matter—but They Aren’t Magic

You may have heard marriage advice such as, “Use an I-statement.”

So instead of, “You’re an inconsiderate jerk,” we say, “I feel that you are an inconsiderate jerk.”

Apparently the word feel has now sanctified the sentence.

Not quite.

Traditional Behavioral Couple Therapy—usually shortened to TBCT—has long taught couples specific skills for communicating and solving problems. Improving constructive communication is also one of the common principles Benson and colleagues identified.¹ But later approaches such as IBCT recognized that technique alone may not be enough.

You can learn the vocabulary of good communication while retaining the heart of prosecution. You can speak softly and still manipulate. You can use an I-statement as a precision-guided missile.

Real communication requires more than phrasing. It requires understanding, emotional regulation, responsibility, empathy, honesty, and a genuine desire to solve the problem rather than defeat the person.

Sometimes You Need Acceptance. Sometimes You Need Change.

This is another particularly useful contribution from IBCT.

Some marriage problems require change. If I am dishonest, “accepting our differences” is not the answer. If I routinely speak cruelly, I need to stop. If I refuse reasonable financial responsibility, something must change. If there is coercion, violence, intimidation, or abuse, teaching better communication alone is inadequate and may be unsafe.

But other conflicts grow from enduring differences between two legitimate human beings. One likes plans; the other likes spontaneity. One processes aloud; the other needs time before responding. One wants considerably more togetherness; the other needs more solitude. One loads the dishwasher correctly; the other apparently rejects objective reality.

Some things should change. Some things should be understood. Some things should be accommodated. Some things may need to become less threatening.

Christensen and the late Neil Jacobson developed IBCT around this important balance between acceptance and change. Acceptance in this context does not mean declaring everything acceptable. It means learning to understand and live graciously with some differences while continuing to work directly on behaviors that genuinely need to change.¹¹

IBCT has been tested in randomized clinical trials—studies in which couples receive different treatment approaches so researchers can compare what happens rather than relying on whether people thought the counseling helped. Research has supported its effectiveness, including studies that followed couples after treatment, and the approach has been used within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.¹¹

So the question is not, “Should I accept my spouse or should my spouse change?” A healthier question is, “What here needs to change, and what here do we need to understand and learn to handle differently?”

Those are not the same problem.

Learn the Dance, Then Change Your Step

Now we need to turn all of this research into something you can use. The next time you and your spouse have a recurring conflict, do not begin by asking only, “What are we fighting about?” Ask, “What happens to us when we fight about it?”

Then use this system.

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Change Your Step System

1. Name the Pattern

Slow the movie down. What triggered the conflict? Who moved first? Did someone criticize, accuse, demand, pressure, defend, appease, withdraw, shut down, or leave? What happened next? Then what?

Do not begin with motives. Begin with observable behavior: “When I did this, you did that. Then I responded by doing this.”

You are trying to see the dance.

2. Find Your Step

Now comes the part most of us would prefer to skip. Ask, “What did I contribute to this pattern?”

Not, “Who started it?” Not, “Who was more wrong?” Not, “What did my spouse make me do?”

Your spouse may have behaved badly. That still leaves you responsible for your step.

If you normally pursue, identify it. If you withdraw, identify it. If you criticize, identify it. If you appease until you become resentful, identify it. If you become defensive before your spouse finishes the second sentence, identify it.

You cannot directly change your spouse’s step. You can change yours.

And once again, Jesus’ words about the log and the speck become intensely practical. We tend to read Matthew 7 as a lesson about judging others, and it is. But notice that Jesus expects action: “First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5). Deal truthfully with your part first. Then you may actually be able to help with the other person’s part.

3. Find What Is Underneath It

Ask yourself, “What was I actually feeling?”

Anger may be the first answer. Keep looking. Was I hurt? Afraid? Embarrassed? Rejected? Unimportant? Controlled? Disrespected? Abandoned?

Then learn to communicate the underlying reality without turning it into an accusation. Instead of, “You don’t care about me,” try, “When that happened, I felt like I didn’t matter very much to you.”

That is empathic joining in ordinary clothes.

You are taking off some of the armor.

4. Choose a Different Step

This is where insight becomes useful. Choose one specific behavior that interrupts your normal pattern.

If you normally pursue, try: “This matters to me, and I want us to talk about it. Is now a good time, or can we choose a time tonight?”

If you normally withdraw, try: “I want to finish this conversation. I’m getting overwhelmed and need twenty minutes. I will come back at 7:30 and we’ll continue.”

If you normally accuse, replace the accusation with the observable event, your response, and what you need to discuss. If you normally become defensive, ask one clarifying question before explaining yourself.

One.

You may be amazed how difficult one question can be when every molecule in your body is preparing Exhibit A for the defense.

5. Repair the Damage

Healthy couples do not avoid every bad interaction. They become better at repair.

If you spoke wrongly, say so. If you misunderstood, acknowledge it. If you withdrew and failed to return, return. If you hurt your spouse, listen long enough to understand the injury. If forgiveness needs to be requested, request it.

Do not wait three days because you are hoping the marriage will develop amnesia.

Paul’s instruction in Ephesians 4:32 could almost serve as a repair manual in a single sentence: “Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.” Kindness changes how we approach. Tenderheartedness changes how we see the person we hurt. Forgiveness changes what we do with the debt.

Repair teaches the relationship that conflict does not have to mean abandonment.

6. Notice What Worked

This step is easy to overlook. What did either of you do differently this time? Did she lower her voice? Did he stay engaged? Did someone ask a question instead of making an accusation? Did somebody take a break and actually come back when promised? Did one of you apologize before being cornered into it?

Notice it.

Say something: “Thank you for coming back to finish that conversation.” “I noticed you were really frustrated and didn’t attack me.” “That was hard for you to tell me. Thank you for telling me.”

Remember the fifth principle Benson and colleagues found in effective couple therapy: strengthen what is already good.¹

What gets intentionally practiced has a much better chance of becoming normal.

Then Do It Again

That is the system: Name the pattern. Find your step. Find what is underneath it. Choose a different step. Repair the damage. Notice what worked.

Then repeat it.

You will probably not execute it beautifully the first time. Welcome to being married.

The objective is not one magnificent conflict in which both of you communicate so flawlessly that researchers arrive from UCLA to take notes. The objective is a different pattern.

Patterns are created through repetition. They are also changed through repetition.

You Are Not Powerless Inside a Pattern

One reason recurring conflict becomes so discouraging is that couples eventually begin believing, “This is just who we are.”

No.

It may be what you have practiced.

That is different.

A trigger produces a familiar interpretation, which produces a familiar emotion, which produces a familiar response, which triggers the spouse’s familiar response. After enough repetitions, the whole sequence can happen with breathtaking speed.

But a learned pattern can be interrupted.

That does not mean every marriage problem can be repaired with a six-step system. Serious betrayal, addiction, abuse, coercion, violence, untreated mental-health problems, or persistent unwillingness to change may require specialized professional intervention. No spouse should be told that changing his or her communication technique makes another person’s destructive behavior acceptable.

But for a great many ordinary distressed marriages, recognizing the pattern produces an enormously hopeful realization: I may not be able to change my spouse, but I am not powerless here.

For Christians there is an even deeper reason to believe that destructive patterns can change. The gospel itself is a story of reconciliation. God did not wait for us to repair our relationship with Him before moving toward us. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The husband or wife who has received that kind of grace has both a model and a reason to extend grace, seek forgiveness, speak truth in love, and move toward reconciliation. We do not do those things to earn God’s acceptance. We do them because in Christ we have already received it.

And marriage gives us an extraordinary place to live that reality. Paul tells husbands to love their wives “just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). That is considerably more demanding than winning the argument. The gospel changes the question from How do I get my spouse to give me what I deserve? toward How does someone who has received the sacrificial love of Christ love another imperfect human being?

So I can learn the pattern. I can recognize my step. I can understand what is happening underneath it. I can choose a different response. I can repair what I damage. I can reinforce what is getting better. And I can do it again tomorrow.

Healthy marriages are not built primarily from spectacular breakthroughs. They are built from thousands of ordinary interactions in which two imperfect people gradually learn how to tell the truth, control themselves, understand one another, repair damage, forgive, adjust, love, and begin again.

That is how a pattern changes.

And eventually you may discover something remarkable. The thing that used to happen every time doesn’t happen every time anymore. Then it happens less often. Then you catch it sooner. Then one of you recognizes it and says, “Wait. We’re doing that thing again.”

And instead of preparing for battle, somebody changes a step.

That is transformation beginning to become visible.

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Coaching Questions

[The purpose of these questions is not merely for you to evaluate what you know, but to help you examine how these truths are showing up in your life and leadership. Take your time with them. Resist the temptation to answer quickly or to think primarily about someone else who needs to hear this. Ask the Lord to help you see yourself clearly, invite someone you trust to speak honestly into your life, and identify where knowledge needs to become action. Applied knowledge repeated consistently becomes transformation.]

1. Think about one conflict that occurs repeatedly in your marriage. Beyond the subject itself, what is the recurring pattern between the two of you?
2. When conflict intensifies, are you more likely to pursue, pressure, criticize, defend, avoid, withdraw, appease, or shut down? What does your response tend to produce in your spouse?
3. What vulnerable emotion—hurt, fear, disappointment, loneliness, rejection, embarrassment, or something else—do you sometimes communicate as anger, criticism, or withdrawal instead?
4. What is one specific change you can make in your part of the pattern without waiting for your spouse to change first?
5. What is already good in your marriage that the two of you have stopped noticing, thanking one another for, enjoying, or intentionally strengthening?

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Endnotes

¹ Lisa A. Benson, Meghan M. McGinn, and Andrew Christensen, “Common Principles of Couple Therapy,” Behavior Therapy 43, no. 1 (2012): 25–35. The authors identify five common principles across evidence-based couple therapies: changing how couples conceptualize their problems, reducing destructive emotion-driven behavior, eliciting avoided private emotion, increasing constructive communication, and emphasizing strengths and gains.

² Andrew Christensen, Brian D. Doss, and colleagues’ descriptions of Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy explain unified detachment as helping couples examine their interactional problem objectively—as an “it” rather than a defect in “you.” See Andrew Christensen et al., “Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy,” Current Opinion in Psychology 13 (2017): 134–138.

³ Demand-withdraw has been studied extensively in the work of Christensen and colleagues. The Couples Interaction Rating System operationalizes demanding behavior through blame and pressure for change and withdrawal through avoidance, disengagement, and withdrawal. See Andrew Christensen and Christopher L. Heavey, “Gender and Social Structure in the Demand/Withdraw Pattern of Marital Conflict,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59, no. 1 (1990): 73–81; and related observational work by Heavey, Layne, and Christensen.

⁴ Lauren K. McGinn, Andrew Christensen, and colleagues examined demand-withdraw patterns in more than 1,000 naturally occurring conflicts reported by couples at home. Both forms of demand-withdraw were associated with greater negative emotion and tactics and poorer conflict resolution. See “Demand-Withdraw Patterns in Marital Conflict in the Home,” Personal Relationships.

⁵ Kathleen A. Eldridge, Mia Sevier, Janice Jones, David C. Atkins, and Andrew Christensen, “Demand-Withdraw Communication in Severely Distressed, Moderately Distressed, and Nondistressed Couples: Rigidity and Polarity During Relationship and Personal Problem Discussions,” Journal of Family Psychology 21, no. 2 (2007): 218–226.

⁶ Research has repeatedly associated withdrawal and demand-withdraw with relationship distress and declining satisfaction, although individual studies have differed regarding long-term prediction of divorce. See Kira S. Birditt et al., “Marital Conflict Behaviors and Implications for Divorce over 16 Years,” Journal of Marriage and Family 72, no. 5 (2010), and the studies reviewed therein.

⁷ Research by Christensen, Heavey, Klinetob, Smith, Eldridge, and others indicates that demand-withdraw roles are influenced by who desires change on the particular issue. Partners tend to demand more when discussing changes they want from the other person. This complicates explanations based solely on sex or personality.

⁸ Andrew Christensen, Kathleen Eldridge, Rossella Catta-Preta, Veronica Lim, and Rossella Santagata, “Cross-Cultural Consistency of the Demand/Withdraw Interaction Pattern in Couples,” Journal of Marriage and Family 68, no. 4 (2006): 1029–1044. The study included participants from Brazil, Italy, Taiwan, and the United States and found constructive communication positively associated with relationship satisfaction and demand-withdraw negatively associated with it across countries.

⁹ Family-systems research describes demand-withdraw as a self-maintaining interpersonal process in which one person’s attempts to produce change and the other’s attempts to avoid it can mutually intensify. Related work by Rohrbaugh, Shoham, and colleagues illustrates how attempts to solve a problem can inadvertently maintain the interaction surrounding it.

¹⁰ Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy uses empathic joining to help partners communicate vulnerable or “soft” emotions such as hurt and disappointment that may lie alongside surface anger and resentment. See Christensen et al., “Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy,” and related IBCT treatment literature.

¹¹ IBCT developed from the work of Andrew Christensen and Neil S. Jacobson, integrating acceptance strategies with behavioral change. Clinical trials have supported its efficacy, including follow-up research, and it has been disseminated within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. See Christensen et al., “Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy”; Christensen et al., randomized comparisons of IBCT and Traditional Behavioral Couple Therapy; and subsequent follow-up studies. A later meta-analysis of randomized trials by Rathgeber, Bürkner, Schiller, and Holling found behavioral and emotionally focused couple therapies both produced meaningful post-treatment improvements, while also cautioning about durability and possible publication bias.

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